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Team Workspace with Chats and Requests Based on Telegram Topic Group

Hotline backend groups can be used as a workspace for your team in Telegram, not just for working with dialogues through your connections.

This article describes the main capabilities for organizing team work within a topic group.

  • Creating topics for internal use: team chat, topic with instructions or news, tasks, notifications, etc.
  • Adding other bots (besides Hotline) to the topic group
  • Running bots on behalf of connected accounts and external integrations

The free version of the system is excellent and available for any period

Connection Bot

Why It's Convenient

The team's attention is often focused in the backend group where the main work with customers happens. Placing important team information in this same group can be convenient for the whole team, minimally distracting from work while being noticeable enough.

Group administrators can create their own topics, pin them in the topics list, give them noticeable icons, assign tags to messages for quick search. Learn more about other native topic group functions

Also, third-party bots (different from Hotline, or running through Hotline on behalf of connected accounts) can work in the group, expanding Telegram functionality or providing integrations with external systems.

Examples of Custom Topics

Here are ideas for what processes can also be conducted inside Hotline backend groups in custom topics (which won't be processed by the system). Multiple functions can be combined in one topic.

  1. News and announcements for the team — important updates, process changes, corporate information (only group administrators can write in the topic)

  2. Work discussions on any topics — general team chat for coordination and operational issues (any group member can write in such a topic)

  3. Instructions and contacts for operators — step-by-step guides, additional contacts for different cases, reference information (maintained by admins)

  4. Knowledge base with links and tags — structured storage of useful materials with quick search capabilities

  5. Notifications from scripts or other bots — automatic alerts about payments, quotas, monitoring and other events

  6. Task lists for the team — native Telegram task lists or integration with task managers through bots

Don't use the General topic for communication

It's better to leave the General topic only for Hotline system notifications so you don't miss important information.

Examples of Third-Party Bots for the Group

You can add other bots to Hotline backend groups for additional operator convenience, improving the speed and quality of their work.

  1. Bots for transcribing voice and video messages — several bots provide higher quality transcription than Telegram's built-in tools

  2. Bots for translations, spelling and response generation — you can use bots for better quality translations and text generation in needed languages

  3. Bots for maintaining calendars or task lists — booking time for calls, reminders about important events

  4. Bots for notifications about events in external systems — receiving requests from feedback forms, payment notifications, server failures, integration possible through Hotline Topics API

  5. Bots for processing custom commands — expanding functionality through Webhooks or CUSTOM_COMMANDS parameter, supplementing user information

Bots don't see messages from other bots

Note that bots in Telegram cannot directly see messages from other bots in the group, but depending on the task there are different ways to organize data transfer between different systems.

Special Hotline Capabilities

As you master Hotline capabilities, you might like the following functions to increase backend group functionality:

  1. Running bots on behalf of a connected account — When connecting accounts to Hotline, it becomes possible to run other bots on their behalf with the /new command, which can send messages to corresponding topics, be used to check connected account status (example: @spambot), or manage an external service.

  2. Monitoring chats by keywords — When connecting accounts to Hotline, it becomes possible to monitor chats by keywords that they're members of. When you master this function, you get a tool for additional lead search or monitoring mentions of your service or product.

  3. Adding permanent support to customer chats — Hotline can simplify organizing permanent support for important chats on behalf of a corporate bot or account.

Mentioned cases for expanding backend group functionality:


List of All Cases